how to output only a specific known line number using cat or head/tail

Question

I know how to use head or tail to output a certain number of lines, but how do I output only a specific line number(s)?

Something like:

head --only-line=73 <file>

Answer 1

How do I output only a specific line number?

head -n LINE_NUMBER file.txt | tail -n + LINE_NUMBER

where LINE_NUMBER is which line number you want to print.

You can also use:

awk '{if(NR==LINE_NUMBER) print $0}' file.txt

Or

sed -n LINE_NUMBERp file.txt

Source: Write a bash script to print a particular line from a file - GeeksforGeeks

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See Also:

• An A-Z Index of the Linux command line - SS64.com
• head Man Page - Linux - SS64.com
• tail Man Page - Linux - SS64.com
• awk gawk Man Page - Linux - SS64.com
• sed Man Page - Linux - SS64.com